VIRGINIA BEACH
The vision of the school division for the next six years was outlined at Tuesday's School Board meeting, and it focuses on critical thinking over test-taking.
"Stakeholders have made it abundantly clear that they want the emphasis in our classrooms to be one of teaching thinking skills, not testing skills," said William H. Graves, chairman of the division's strategic planning committee and dean of the Darden School of Education at Old Dominion University.
The plan calls on the division to prepare 95 percent or more of its graduates with "the skills that they need to succeed as 21st century learners, workers and citizens" by 2015.
To be considered successful, students will be proficient academically, effective at communicating and working with others, globally aware and self-motivated, as well as critical, creative problem-solvers.
To hear community reaction to the plan, the school division is holding an open mic session at Tallwood High School from
6 to 8 p.m. Sept. 22, two weeks before the board plans to vote on it.
See the draft at http://www.vbschools.com/sb_pdf/012D.pdf
Comments also are being accepted through that page.
The plan calls for the division to work critical thinking into the curriculum, increase the enrollment of minority students in challenging courses, expand the full-day kindergarten program and reduce the over-representation of minorities in special education programs.
Lauren Roth, (757) 222-5133 or lauren.roth@pilotonline.com
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Continuation of “What Plan”
Lastly, I know of two Black parents who requested the use of RTI for their children who were going through the eligibility process for special education and guess what.......
The VB special education department REFUSED THE PARENTS REQUEST!
I guess those children were not worthy of "high-quality instruction"
I hope VBCPS parents see this plan for what it is just a piece of paper.
What Plan?????
Once again Dr. Merrill has drop the ball in taking proactive steps to improve learning for all children in VBCPS.
Key measures outlined in the Strategic Plan are invalid and lack measurability. For instance, using a non-standardize assessment like the “Development Reading Assessment” will NOT measure all the component of reading as required by NCLB. Perhaps, this is why Dr. Merrill approved this assessment tool.
I guess Dr. Merrill does not realize that the reauthorization of the IDEA 2004, which has been in effect for many years now, already provides for the use of Response to Intervention and that RTI is defined as providing “high-quality instruction” and intervention matching student needs which is then monitor over a period of time.
The Strategic Plan calls for using RTI to address the Minority representation in special education. So I guess Dr. Merrill is admitting that VBCPS does not and has not been providing high-quality instruction to minority students. That’s no big surprise!
Lastly, I know of two Black parents who requested the use of RTI for their children who were going through the eligibility process for special education and guess what……The
Nothing but vague pie-in-the-sky educrat-speak
Anything to hide the fact that schools are failing to teach our kids. Can someone please explain how you teach "critical thinking skills" to someone? Also, what exactly does being "globally aware" mean? I have a very deep suspicion it means curriculum that teaches how UN and foreign values are superior to ours.